Municipal Progress.

New York City is preparing for some

sort of modest celebration, on May 26, of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the municipal organization of the city. The celebration will occur in a season of marvelous local expansion and prosperity. Never before were so many great projects on foot. The underground transit system, as now approaching completion, proves to be merely the beginning of an immense ramification which has been outlined by Mr. Parsons, the engineer of the lines. As its second year advances, the good work of the Low administration begins to be manifest in all departments. Police reforms proceed apace under General Greene's vigilant eye and unrelenting hand; the transformation of the health department under Dr. Lederle has been set forth in a remarkable pamphlet issued by the City Club; and in almost all the departments, good work is producing recognized results. It is now confidently expected that Mr. Low's renomination will be demanded by the Republicans, the Citizens' Union, and the anti-Tammany Democratic organizations that united to elect him in the fall of 1901,-New York's next municipal election occurring in the first week of November of the present year.

City Contests in Ohio.

In various other large cities of the country, municipal elections occur in the springtime. The most important city campaign now pending is that of Chicago. For an account of the issues and the candidates, we refer our readers to an article contributed to this number by Dean Judson, of the University of Chicago, himself a model type of the scholar in politics. In Cincinnati, there is a citizens' municipal ticket in the field whose candidate for mayor is the widely known president of the

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Big Four" Railroad, Mr. M. E. Ingalls, who has long been a vigorous exponent of soundmoney ideas and a citizen of public spirit. The Democrats are supporting this Ingalls ticket. The Republicans declare that the real significance of Mr. Ingalls' candidacy lies in a scheme to advance him from mayor to governor of Ohio, in order to make him a Presidential candidate next year. The Republicans have renominated. Mayor Fleischmann, who is opposed by an alli. ance of the churches on the ground of his being at the head of a great distillery business and naturally an exponent of the liquor interests. In Cincinnati, the local and municipal questions involved are the predominant ones; but elsewhere the contest is interesting chiefly because Mr. Ingalls' victory would almost inevitably lead to his being a candidate, next fall, for the governorship. Meanwhile, another interesting Demo

MR. M. E. INGALLS.

cratic figure, the Hon. Tom L. Johnson, has been renominated for the mayoralty of Cleveland, Ohio's largest city. The Republicans have nominated against him Hon. Harvey D. Goulder, a well-known lawyer.

Affairs in St. Louis.

In St. Louis, a mayor is not to be elected this spring, but a number of vacancies in the City Council and the House of Delegates are to be filled, and it is reported that the Republicans have nominated for these an exceptionally strong and clean ticket. Our advices are not quite so complimentary regarding the Democratic nominees, although the subject is not a matter about which we have made special inquiry. At the end of the present month, St. Louis is to celebrate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase with an elaborate programme, and the President of the United States has so arranged his itinerary as to arrive in St. Louis on the afternoon of April 29, leaving in the early morning of May 1. These exercises will be under the auspices of the exposition management, and will in a sense be preliminary to the holding of the great exposition next year. Ex-Gov. David R. Francis, president of the exposition, came back, last month, from a highly successful European tour,

HON. D. R. FRANCIS.

(President of the St. Louis Exposition.)

where he basked in the favor of royalty, met the most important commercial bodies, and helped to secure promises and appropriations that will result in more extensive and attractive exhibits from public and private sources abroad than were expected a few months ago.

Railroad

Canada.

Canal and While the New York Legislature at Projects in Albany has been discussing the plan of expending $100,000,000 on the enlargement of the Erie Canal, the Canadian Parliament at Ottawa has been interesting itself in what is really a rival project of the most formidable kind,-the proposed canal from the Georgian Bay to the St. Lawrence at Montreal. When first proposed, this canal was to have had a depth of ten feet. The plans were changed five years ago to provide for a depth of fourteen feet, and now another change has been adopted which calls for a depth of twenty feet. This would give a direct outlet to the ocean for large freight steamers. A glance at the map shows that the Georgian Bay route follows an almost direct line from the Lake Superior ports to Montreal. Its advocates say that it can be completed in much less time than the Erie Canal enlargement, and for much less money. Moreover, its projectors do not ask the Canadian government to pay the cost, but only to guarantee their bonds, in order to enable

them to borrow at a low rate of interest. It is expected that the canal's tolls will fully support the undertaking. If this canal were built, much of the wheat, flour, and various other export products of our Northwest would probably go to Europe by way of Montreal and the St. Lawrence. It seems probable that the project will be indorsed by the Dominion Parliament now in session. Apropos of the energy of our Canadian neighbors in the development of canals, we publish elsewhere in this number an article from the pen of Mr. E. T. D. Chambers describing the interesting project of a new transcontinental railroad which is to run considerably north of the Canadian Pacific. The whole subject of grain-transportation and trade routes is likely to be brought under consideration by a special government commission.

Other Canadian Interests.

The Canadian Parliament now in session is also to readjust representation according to the findings of the recent census, a railway commission is to be created, and a considerable legislative programme has been laid out for the session. The Canadians have not been pleased with the selection by President Roosevelt of Messrs. Lodge, Root, and Turner as the American members of the tribunal to decide the Alaska boundary question. Of the three British members, Canada will supply two, these being Sir Louis Jette, LieutenantGovernor of Quebec, and Justice Armour, of the Supreme Court of Canada. Sir Louis was for a long time a member of the Quebec bench. The other British member will be no less eminent a personage than Lord Alverstone, Chief Justice of England. The Canadian case is to be in charge of the Hon. Clifford Sifton, minister of the interior, with whom there will be associated some eminent British and Canadian lawyers, among whom are named Mr. Christopher Robinson, of Toronto, and the Hon. Edward Blake, now one of the Irish Nationalist members of the British Parliament, but formerly, for a long time, a distinguished statesman in Canada. The Alaska tribunal will meet in London, probably in September. There is talk of an early resumption of the sessions of the dormant Joint High Commission, of which Senator Fairbanks is the ranking American member. If this commission could get together and devise a broad and liberal mea'sure of commercial reciprocity between Canada and the United States, it would accomplish a most beneficent work, and one for which conditions on both sides of the international boundary line are now ripe. In Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota and the far Northwest an enthusiastic Reciprocity League is at work.

The Empire and Its De

With their thousands of hardy fishermen and mariners on the eastern seafenses. board, the Canadians are about to enter in earnest upon the organization of a naval militia to serve Dominion or imperial needs in time of war. This will be to some extent a contribution toward that voluntary system of mutual and joint defense which Mr. Chamberlain now declares the whole empire must enter upon or face inevitable dissolution. Mr. Chamberlain has come back from South Africa with such enhancement of prestige, when the rest of the Balfour administration is under sharp criticism, that everything he says attracts profound attention. He has much to say about a certain "new conception of empire," which means, when reduced to hard and business-like terms, that England's army and navy bills have outgrown the ability of John Bull to pay them

Ger

alone, and that Canada, Australia, and South Africa are to be asked, in the future, to share in the support of the British army and navy. It is to be remembered that the shipbuilding programme of Germany and other countries is of peculiar interest to the "Mistress of the Seas;" and the English have not by any means given up their idea that their navy must be equal to the combined fleets of any two or three foreign powers. Mr. Arnold-Forster, the admiralty secretary, whose position corresponds to that of our Secretary of the Navy, has introduced a naval budget for the coming year that calls for the unprecedented expenditure of $180,000,000. Mr. Arnold-Forster's argument is that England's great navy is a grim necessity to a country that imports two-thirds of its food-supplies many has no need of a navy except for purposes of aggression. It is the growth of the German navy that is compelling the United States to spend so much money on ships, and that is at the bottom of England's costly and regrettable increase of naval armaments. England is not building ships for aggression, but as a form of national insurance. At the present date, according to Mr. Arnold-Forster, England has seventyone warships in process of construction. Mr. Brodrick, the war minister, has also a very formidable budget. Never before, in time of peace, have England's expenditures for the two armed services been so huge. Mr. Brodrick's reorganization of the army has given so little satisfaction that there will be a good deal of grumbling about paying the bills.

His army estimates amount to

WHAT HE WANTS TO KNOW.

almost the same total as the navy bill, and may be set down, in round figures, at $175,000,000. In apologizing, last month, for the increase of army expenditure, Mr. Balfour, the premier, called attention in a somewhat sensational way to Russia's activity in the direction of India. John Bull is disposed to say that he could stand an increase of army expenditure, or could bear the cost of naval expansion, in the face of a clear emergency; but he hates mightily to pay the bills for expansion in the two services at the same time, with no well-defined reason for either.

The Irish Situation.

It is this state of mind of the overburdened taxpayer, and nothing else, that somewhat threatens the brilliant consummation of the government's Irish land scheme. The Irish landlords will not sell for less than a certain scale of prices based upon average rental, the tenants will not buy them out except upon a lower basis similar to that established by earlier precedent, and it has been expected that the national treasury would pay the difference in order to settle forever the Irish land question and pave the way for economic prosperity and political harmony. It would be a good investment for England, even with the present weight of her financial burdens. Meanwhile, the Irish Nationalist members of Parliament have thus far through the session abstained from annoying the Balfour government, and are on their good behavior, awaiting the presentation of the promised land measure.

The gov ernment, last month, further placated the Irish by introducing some detailed bills in the line of increasing the powers of the Irish county councils and local-government bodies. We publish elsewhere an interesting article by the Hon. Horace Plunkett, in the form of an interview, on the progress of agriculture in Ireland under the auspices of the coöperative societies which he has done so much to promote. It is almost needless to say that if the great land-purchase scheme should go through in the near future, there would doubtless be a very rapid development of the sort of rural coöperative progress of which Mr. Plunkett is the best exponent.

HON. HORACE PLUNKETT.

new government. His particular contribution to the improvement of political affairs in Cape Colony seems to be the forming of a friendly personal alliance with Mr. Hofmeyr, Mr. Sauer, Mr. Merriman, and the other leaders of the socalled "Afrikander Bond," which really controls and will continue to dominate the affairs of South Africa. Mr. Merriman and Mr. Sauer are the present leaders in the House of Assembly. Mr. Hofmeyr was Mr. Rhodes' chief political ally in the old days, and although not in the Cape Parliament now, he is the real head of the Dutch-speaking element. If one asks what Mr. Chamberlain actually accomplished, it is enough to point to the fact that he succeeded in arranging for the payment of $150,000,000 toward the South African war debt by the owners of the Johannesburg gold mines. Further than that, a second sum of $150,000,000 on that debt is to be assumed by the taxpayers of the Transvaal and Orange River colonies; that is to say, they will issue bonds for that amount, and will provide for interest and sinking fund,-with a British guarantee of the debt, in order to make the bonds marketable. Mr. Chamberlain has not solved the difficulties that involve the labor problem in South Africa, nor

has he greatly changed the feelings of the Boers. toward England; but all elements in South Africa have rather liked his sharp, direct methods of discussion, and are the better disposed to settle down to the peaceful pursuit of agriculture and industry. On March 19, Mr. Chamberlain made the interesting statement in the House of Commons that one hundred thousand Boers had been "repatriated," that is to say, restored to their homes, a large proportion of them from the military prisons in St. Helena, Ceylon, Bermuda, and elsewhere. Mr. Chamberlain also stated that the government was giving the new colonists, under the peace provisions, the sum of $75,000,000 toward the expenses of their resettlement. He has been treated in London like a conquering hero, and the newspapers were full of talk, last month, of a reconstructed ministry with Chamberlain as premier and Balfour as foreign minister.

communicating with Holland in remonstrance against the inconvenience to German traffic of the Dutch railway strikes. It is none the less true that there is much apprehension in the Netherlands on the ground of Germany's supposed desire for an excuse to interfere in Dutch affairs. The expressions of displeasure in Germany at the tone of American public opinion in respect to the question of naval expansion are decidedly bitter. The German naval budget as presented by the naval secretary, Admiral von Tirpitz, and slightly modified in the Reichstag, amounts to approximately $50,000,000. The feeling in Germany on the score of American trade rivalry has risen to maximum height. The industrial depression to which this feeling is somewhat due is, however, reported as less serious from month to month. The Emperor's versatility has been shown in recent theological pronouncements (see page 467), in an attempt to secure reforms in German literary style, and in sundry other directions.

French Topics.

In France, the most important publictopic, last month, was the action of the Chamber of Deputies in supporting the extreme policy of Premier Combes and the ministry on the school question. The principle established in the law of associations as enacted under the former premier, M. WaldeckRousseau, was that schools carried on by men and women of the religious teaching orders must apply for express governmental authorization. The latest law, as adopted last month, simply refuses in a wholesale way to grant the applications. Some months will be required to make the extremely important changes and transfers requisite to an execution of this radical measure. The principal argument of Premier Combes had to do with the anti-republican character of the instruction in the monastic schools. It is to be feared that so harsh a policy will have unfortunate reactions. It seems to be the prevailing opinion that the Combes ministry cannot last very much longer, and that M. Rouvier or M. Ribot will be the next premier. Although President Loubet's seven-year term, which began in 1899, has three years yet to run, there is already definite talk of making M. WaldeckRousseau his successor. In a recent address in the Chamber of Deputies, the foreign minister, M. Delcassé, declared it a necessity for France that Morocco's independence should be maintained, expressed satisfaction with the status of the Franco-Russian alliance, mentioned hopefully the rapprochement of France and Italy, and took an altogether favorable view of the international position of the republic.